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  1. Self-ownership and despotism: Locke on property in the person, divine dominium of human life, and rights-forfeiture.Johan Olsthoorn - 2019 - Social Philosophy and Policy 36 (2):242-263.
    :This essay explores the meaning and normative significance of Locke’s depiction of individuals as proprietors of their own person. I begin by reconsidering the long-standing puzzle concerning Locke’s simultaneous endorsement of divine proprietorship and self-ownership. Befuddlement vanishes, I contend, once we reject concurrent ownership in the same object: while God fully owns our lives, humans are initially sole proprietors of their own person. Locke employs two conceptions of “personhood”: as expressing legal independence vis-à-vis humans and moral accountability vis-à-vis God. Humans (...)
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  • Rethinking Libertarianism: Elizabeth Anderson's Private Government. [REVIEW]David Ellerman - 2018 - Challenge 61:156-182.
    In her recent book Private Government, Elizabeth Anderson makes a powerful but pragmatic case against the abuses experienced by employees in conventional corporations. The purpose of this review-essay is to contrast Anderson’s pragmatic critique of many abuses in the employment relation with a principled critique of the employment relationship itself. This principled critique is based on the theory of inalienable rights that descends from the Reformation doctrine of the inalienability of conscience down through the Enlightenment in the abolitionist, democratic, and (...)
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  • On the Labor Theory of Property: Is The Problem Distribution or Predistribution?David Ellerman - 2017 - Challenge: The Magazine of Economic Affairs 60 (2):171-188.
    Much of the recent discussion in progressive circles [e.g., Stiglitz; Galbraith; Piketty] has focused the obscene mal-distribution of wealth and income as if that was "the" problem in our economic system. And the proposed redistributive reforms have all stuck to that framing of the question. To put the question in historical perspective, one might note that there was a similar, if not more extreme, mal-distribution of wealth, income, and political power in the Antebellum system of slavery. Yet, it should be (...)
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  • The Labour Theory of Property and Marginal Productivity Theory.David Ellerman - 2016 - Economic Thought 5 (1):19.
    After Marx, dissenting economics almost always used 'the labour theory' as a theory of value. This paper develops a modern treatment of the alternative labour theory of property that is essentially the property theoretic application of the juridical principle of responsibility: impute legal responsibility in accordance with who was in fact responsible. To understand descriptively how assets and liabilities are appropriated in normal production, a 'fundamental myth' needs to be cleared away, and then the market mechanism of appropriation can be (...)
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  • The Democratic Worker-Owned Firm : A New Model for the East and West.David Ellerman - 2015 - Routledge.
    When this book was first published in 1990, there were massive economic changes in the East and significant economic challenges to the West. This critical analysis of democratic theory discusses the principles and forces that push both socialist and capitalist economies toward a common ground of workplace democratization. This book is a comprehensive approach to the theory and practice of the "Democratic firm" – from philosophical first principles to legal theory and finally to some of the details of financial structure. (...)
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  • The Possibility of Contractual Slavery.Danny Frederick - 2016 - Philosophical Quarterly 66 (262):47-64.
    In contrast to eminent historical philosophers, almost all contemporary philosophers maintain that slavery is impermissible. In the enthusiasm of the Enlightenment, a number of arguments gained currency which were intended to show that contractual slavery is not merely impermissible but impossible. Those arguments are influential today in moral, legal and political philosophy, even in discussions that go beyond the issue of contractual slavery. I explain what slavery is, giving historical and other illustrations. I examine the arguments for the impossibility of (...)
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  • Does Classical Liberalism Imply Democracy?David Ellerman - 2015 - Ethics and Global Politics 8 (1):29310.
    There is a fault line running through classical liberalism as to whether or not democratic self-governance is a necessary part of a liberal social order. The democratic and non-democratic strains of classical liberalism are both present today—particularly in America. Many contemporary libertarians and neo-Austrian economists represent the non-democratic strain in their promotion of non-democratic sovereign city-states (startup cities or charter cities). We will take the late James M. Buchanan as a representative of the democratic strain of classical liberalism. Since the (...)
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  • On Property Theory.David Ellerman - 2014 - Journal of Economic Issues (3):601–624.
    A theory of property needs to give an account of the whole life-cycle of a property right: how it is initiated, transferred, and terminated. Economics has focused on the transfers in the market and has almost completely neglected the question of the initiation and termination of property in normal production and consumption (not in some original state or in the transition from common to private property). The institutional mechanism for the normal initiation and termination of property is an invisible-hand function (...)
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  • Privacy, Interests, and Inalienable Rights.Adam D. Moore - 2018 - Moral Philosophy and Politics 5 (2):327-355.
    Some rights are so important for human autonomy and well-being that many scholars insist they should not be waived, traded, or abandoned. Privacy is a recent addition to this list. At the other end of the spectrum is the belief that privacy is a mere unimportant interest or preference. This paper defends a middle path between viewing privacy as an inalienable, non-waivable, non-transferrable right and the view of privacy as a mere subjective interest. First, an account of privacy is offered (...)
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  • Reply to Commentaries on ‘The Labour Theory of Property and Marginal Productivity Theory’.David Ellerman - 2016 - Economic Thought 5 (2):44.
    Jamie Morgan's commentary (Morgan, 2016) on my paper 'The Labour Theory of Property and Marginal Productivity Theory' (Ellerman, 2016) and Ted Burczak's later comments (Burczak, 2016) raise a number of issues that surely will occur to other readers and that need to be addressed. I take the occasion to expand upon the arguments and to explore some related issues. In the narrative that unfolds, Frank H. Knight plays the role of the sophisticated defender of the system of renting, hiring and (...)
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  • On the Renting of Persons: The Neo-Abolitionist Case Against Today's Peculiar Institution.David Ellerman - 2015 - Economic Thought 4 (1):1-20.
    Liberal thought (in the sense of classical liberalism) is based on the juxtaposition of consent to coercion. Autocracy and slavery were seen as based on coercion whereas today's political democracy and economic 'employment system' are based on consent to voluntary contracts. This paper retrieves an almost forgotten dark side of contractarian thought that based autocracy and slavery on explicit or implicit voluntary contracts. To answer these 'best case' arguments for slavery and autocracy, the democratic and abolitionist movements forged arguments not (...)
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  • Is the Expiration of Intellectual Property Rights a Problem for Non-consequentialist Theories of Intellectual Property?Jukka Varelius - 2014 - Res Publica 20 (4):345-357.
    The expiration of intellectual property rights has been seen to amount to a problem for non-consequentialist theories of intellectual property. In this article, I assess whether the difficulty is real. I maintain that, as things are at least, there is no sufficient reason to believe that the termination of intellectual property rights is an insurmountable problem for non-consequentialist theories of intellectual property rights.
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  • Comment on 'About Waged Labour: From Monetary Subordination to Exploitation'.David Ellerman - 2017 - Economic Thought 6 (2):37.
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